Archive for February, 2007

HSBC is offering a couple new signup offers on checking accounts. Combine these with their 5.05% APY Online Savings accounts and your transfers between them will be done 1 business day instead of the normal 3 which is why I like to use these accounts in tandem.

Open an HSBC Interest Checking Account and receive a $75 Cash Bonus

If you qualify for the Interest Checking bonus, $75 will be deposited in your checking account within 6 to 8 weeks after the account opening. The Annual Percentage Yield (APY) of 0.05% is accurate as of February 1, 2007 on balances of $5.00 or more. No charge for your first order of selected wallet-style checks.

Fees: Enjoy an Interest Checking account with no monthly maintenance fee with Direct Deposit or when balance requirements from qualifying HSBC accounts is $3,000 or more. This $3,000 includes all HSBC accounts so if you have a Online Savings account, mortgage, loan, etc it is the combined balance between them.

Open a Free Checking Account and when you open an HSBC Debit MasterCard with PayPassTM, you’ll receive a
$25 Cash Bonus!

Account Features: No direct deposit required, no monthly maintenance fees, no minimum balances, free first order of selected wallet-style checks.

HSBC Checking Offer

Pentagon Federal Credit Union has been long known for their great rates and low fees. Unlike some of the low rates you will find on places like bankrate.com they do not have a bunch of junk fees or bait and switch terms. Here are some of the fees you do not have to pay which you would with most lenders:

• Processing Fee
• Underwriting Fee
• Application Fee
• Credit Report Fee
• Appraisal fee
• Tax Service Fee
• Flood Certification Fee
• Closing Fee

Rates on 30 Year Fixed Conventional and JUMBO Mortgage

As of today (February 23, 2007) the rate is 6.00% for either a conventional (up to $417,000) or Jumbo (up to $1,000,000) mortgage. This is especially hot for JUMBO as the rate is usually 1/2% higher or so than a conventional at most banks.

PENFED RATES

How To Join Penfed

The easiest way to join is if you are active or retired military. However don’t despair if you are not, you can also join if you are a member of an eligible organization

• National Military Family Association (NMFA) is $20 a year for membership and allows you to join PenFed. Its the most universal way to gain membership. http://www.nmfa.org

• Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) is free to full-time undergraduate students and allows you to join PenFed. So if you are in college you may wish to take advantage of this opportunity now. http://www.same.org

Once you are a member of PenFed you do NOT have to keep renewing you membership at these organizations - you are now a member as long as you have your savings account with $5 in it open.

For more information visit PenFed.org

KeyBank has a new offer if you open a checking account.

If you open a personal checking account between February 17, 2007 and March 30, 2007 you will get a free Canon Powershot A460 digital camera as long as you complete one of the following requirements:

• Set up Direct Deposit and/or Automated Payments and complete two transactions each of $150 or more by June 1, 2007
• Or, use your new checking account to make 20 transactions - from ATM withdrawals to online banking to writing checks - and be approved for a new Key credit card† by June 1, 2007

I’m sure not quite as tempting as the free ipod nano they were offering previously, but still not a bad deal if you need a decent digital camera and a checking account.

KeyBank Link | Camera Review

E-Trade is offering new customers to their Complete Savings Account a $25 bonus for signing up. The current interest rate is a respectable 5.05% APY.

The minimum deposit is only $1 and the $25 will be credited to your account within 30 days of funding. Reportedly they only do a soft pull of your credit report when opening (this is a good thing).

E-Trade $25 Sign Up Link

The Love Gram is offering free love grams today. The concept is basically you enter your loved ones phone number and they call and play a voice telegram for them. Normally 99 cents each.

Apply promo code then hit send the love to skip entering your credit card information.

The Love Gram
Promo Code: SHARETHELOVE

It appears Wells Fargo has followed in Bank of Americas path and is now offering its customers 100 free trades if you have $25,000.

The advantage of BOA is that instead of needing the $25k in just your brokerage account at Wells Fargo it is combined across all accounts so your loans, cds, and checking account balances count towards this as well. Also BOA’s program applies to equities only and charges a minimum of $45 for mutual funds/bonds while the new Wells Fargo offering includes there for free as well.

Now when you link your WellsTrade® brokerage account to your Wells Fargo®PMA® Package, you’ll get 100 commission-free online trades a year. Use your commission-free trades for stocks, exchange-traded funds, and even no-load mutual funds.

Just link your WellsTrade account to a PMA Package – our premier offering for investment and banking customers. To qualify for a PMA Package, all you need is $25,000 in brokerage, loan balances or deposits.

And even better — this is the ongoing commission rate for all PMA/WellsTrade customers, not a one-time promotion!

Wells Fargo Free Trades

I thought I would compile a list of my 5 favorite free web based applications. Everyone likes free right? These are sites I use and love almost every day.

If your service engine light comes on here is a quick tip. Bring your car to your local Autozone store and they will read your trouble code for free. You can then look up the code online if needed to find out whats wrong, and possibly something you can fix yourself. Otherwise you can now call around to see what it will cost to get it fixed.

Alternatively Harbor Freight has some cheap OBD readers if you think you’ll get enough use out of it and don’t want to drive over to Autozone:

• Cheap OBD II reader
• Slightly better one with CAN Support and full display

PayPal is making a couple waves the last couple days. First, they are now offering a SecurID style key generator for your PayPal and Ebay accounts. Basically you get a little key chain that rotates numbers every 30 seconds that you use to login to the site instead of having a static password.

Could be an added security layer for power members who have thousands of dollars in transactions floating around, or if you are worried about someone hacking your Paypal account and emptying your bank account. There is a one time $5 fee for the key.

SIGN UP FOR A PAYPAY SECURITY KEY

Also, from now until March 31, 2007 PayPal is offering a $15 rebate off your next $30 purchase in the U.S. and Canada. This includes a lot of great stores like Newegg, Buy.com, Dell, and even EBay!

You have to register your email address at the link below to receive the rebate. The $15.00 rebate will be deposited into your PayPal account by May 28, 2007. Its only good on purchases, so trying to send your friend $30 isn’t going to work.

REGISTER FOR YOUR $15 OFF $30 PURCHASE HERE

Zecco just gave their site a facelift. They’ve redesigned the homepage to be more user friendly as well as give you easier access to some of their blog and forums best posts.

In addition, they’ve actually updated some things in the trading interface (which is what I am most interested in):

• Addition of trading trails to enable conditional trading (more info in the Zecco Trading FAQs)
• Ability to set your preferred landing page, when entering the Trading Center (e.g. to Positions, or Balances)
• We included the Expected Total Purchase costs for limit orders in the Order Preview and Order Detail screens
• Adjusted default display of the duration in the Order Ticket Box

From what I can see it still needs a bit more polishing but at least they are improving. I would still like to see the Account Overview section (in particular the ACH transfer center) greatly improved.

Zecco.com

For those of you like me wondering when you can expect to receive your refund direct depot or check once you efile the IRS has a handy publication 2043 with this information.

The table below shows when your federal tax refund should be deposited in your bank account or your check mailed if you efiled and your refund was accepted within certain dates.

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It seems every florist and store jacks up the prices of roses around Valentines Day 2x what they normally are (my favorite local grocery store goes from $12.99 a dozen to $24.99). If you are looking for some budget friendly roses and have an Aldi’s store near you they have a dozen roses for $5.98 and do not jack up the price. If you want the long stem variety though then it is $16.99 and will be available starting Thursday.

Aldi’s Store Locator

The Festival of Frugality #60 is up over at Frugal for Life with and interesting ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ theme. My post on how to send a fax for free in XDrive is up there, as well as many other great money savings tips so it is definitely worth a read.

This month I am going to start a more detailed net worth calculation by including some additional information - housing and automobiles most notably. I am also going to try to start including more charts as well.

Taxable Accounts:

$9,851.29 - Liquid Savings - 5.05% APY HSBC Savings Account
$14,663.18 - Stocks - Misc. Direct Investments
$5,764.54 - Stocks - Ameritrade Izone
$706.87 - Stocks - Scottrade
$3,686.24 - Stocks - Zecco
$2,554.00 - Bonds - TreasuryDirect

$37,226.12 TOTAL

Retirement Savings:

$14,933.16 - ROTH IRA - Vanguard
$2,301.23 - ROTH IRA - Scottrade
$37,775.54 - 401K - T. Rowe Price

$55,009.93 TOTAL

Debts

$3,469.04 - Student Loan - AES (3.625%)
$7,673.00 - Credit Card BT - Discover (0%)
$7,781.00 - Credit Card BT - Citi (0%)

$18,923.04 TOTAL

Housing / Automobiles

$270,656.67 - Mortgage - Countrywide
$339,900.00 - Approximate Home Value
$11,130.00 - Approximate Car Value - Edmunds.com

$69,243.33 - TOTAL (Approximate Equity)

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